Custom brushes are so much fun to use within digital scrapbooking! You can use custom brushes to paint, draw, apply textures, and even “stamp” images onto your digital scrapbooking pages, and MORE!
Another exciting thing to do to digital scrapbooking custom brushes is to colorize them and convert them into personalized Digital Scrapbooking Embellishments!
By colorizing, I mean to take a black and white (or gray-toned) Custom Brush and apply different colors to different areas of the brushed image. Doing this makes a black and gray-toned “stamped” brush look more like a colored brush embellishment …which means it can look and act more like a digital embellishment (like, add drop shadow), than a simple-looking “stamped” brush image.
Truthfully, a Custom Brush might look a little boring unless you decide to add a little color! Once you apply some color to your custom brush, it’s amazing how they can change right before your eyes and become so colorful and exciting!
For example, the school bus Custom Brush example in black and white is just OK when it’s just in black and white. But add a little color, and this school-inspired Brush really does come to life!
It’s common for beginner digital scrapbookers to overlook Custom Brushes when they add digital accessories to their digital scrapbooking projects. Many beginner scrappers aren’t as familiar with Custom Brushes and don’t realize the greatness of a good Custom Brush, especially when they’re choosing supplies filled with pretty, sparkly, eye-catching digital embellishments!
Custom Brushes are a great example as to why you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. When you learn and realize all the incredible things you can do with a Custom Brush, you may not be so quick to choose a digital embellishment instead of a Brush!
This school bus Custom Brush is from the Digital Scrapbooks and More Back to School Custom Brush Set. I took this Custom Brush and applied it to a new document using black as the outline color within Photoshop Elements (you can also do this in Photoshop). Next, I applied different colors to the brushed on image. Adding a little color worked wonders, and yes, I did take a few extra steps to personalize, which meant that I could color it the way I wanted it to be colored! Unlike pre-colored digital embellishments, besides coloring the bus the typical yellow bus colors, I could always customize it to match my school districts colors, special groups, or club/organizations bus colors!
My colored Custom Brush Image is now ready to use as a digital embellishment for my digital scrapbooking page!
Take a look at this crayon example of colorizing Custom Brushes. This crayon Custom Brush is also from the Back to School Custom Brush Kit. This time, I took the crayons Custom Brush and, again, applied it to a new document and colorized it.
So how did I colorize my Custom Brushes? By using the techniques taught in the Digital Scrapbooks and More Custom Brush tutorials sold at the Scrap Shop for either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.
These tutorials cover the basics of the Brush Tool, Installing Custom Brushes, and Using Custom Brushes in Digital Scrapbooking, and the tutorials teach some of the special techniques needed to advance to things such as colorizing your brush images!
Colorized Brush Images added to Digital Scrapbooking Pages:
Once you have made your colorized brush embellishment, save it as a PNG file so that the the transparencies are preserved. Next, add the colorized Brush embellishment to a digital scrapbooking page! (If you need help saving to a PNG format see the Getting Started Series for lessons all about saving files within Photoshop or Photoshop Elements) 
As you can see from the image above, I used both my colorized Custom Brushes and converted them into personalized digital embellishments!
Using these colorized brush images as embellishments in a digital scrapbooking page really expands the way I can use my custom brushes in my digital scrapbooking projects!
Custom brushes are fun and easy to use! Try colorizing your Custom Brushes! Get Custom Brush sets and training so that you can include them in your next digital scrapbooking project too!
‘Till next time, Cheri
If you liked these back to school brushes used in our article above, then you can get these custom brushes at the Scrap Shop!
The Back-to-School Brushes for Digital Scrapbooking are a super-fun set of digital brushes, perfect for Digital Scrapbooking Pages dedicated to the start of a brand new school year, special classes or favorite school subjects, getting ready for school, and other school-related themes!
Use special photos of back-to-school shopping, your child walking towards the bus on their first day of school, or your favorite classroom photos and combine them with school-inspired custom brushes to create fun, back-to-school digital scrapbooking projects!
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Take a look at another example below of a custom brush turned into a colorized brush embellishment!
Recently at Digital Scrapbooks and More we gave out this “Back to School” Custom Brush for FREE to those that had already signed up for our FREE Newsletter!
It was great example of a Custom Brush that really came alive once some color was added!
It was great for some of our members to try out custom brushes and colorizing before buying too!
Those that sign up for the Newsletter receive a free digital scrapbooking surprise each week! Some of the freebies are digital scrapbooking supplies, digital scrapbooking articles, free step-by-step training guides or blog articles, and sometimes, we even give away a free video tutorial! Also, those that sign up for the Newsletter receive product news as well as members-only sales and discount coupons!
Once you sign up for the FREE Digital Scrapbooking Newsletter, check your email and make sure you click on the link inside the pending-confirmation email that says “Yes! I want to join.” Only until you click on this link within the pending-confirmation email will you confirm your Newsletter subscription and be able to start getting freebies!
Within 24 hours after confirming your Newsletter subscription, you’ll get a Welcome Email with information and a FREEBIE, and then you will be set up to receive all future news and FREEBIES too!
(FREEBIES are for personal use only!)
(Remember – If you want great FREEBIES too, then please sign up for Free digital scrapbooking Newsletter, and join the fun and get some FREEBIES too!)
Special Note: All of our Training, Digital Scrapbooking Supplies, and many of our Freebies, need to be downloaded and then unzipped.
Need help downloading and unzipping your new FREEBIE? Then use these Step-by-Step Training Guides! Or see our FREE Video Training for help ~ Downloading Zipped Files or Unzipping Files
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Also buy other matching Digital Scrapbooking Supplies for all your Back to School Digital Scrapbooking Projects, and Training at the Scrap Shop!
